Feel Free to Put That in Your Tell-All Book

If I wrote a parenting book, it would be called, “If You’re Not Snorting Crack Off of Your Kid’s Toy Box, You’re Probably Fine,” because that’s true. You are DEFINITELY going to fuck your kids up somehow, and you’re PROBABLY not going to fuck them up the way you think you are, so you might as well have a sense of humor about it and just genuinely do the best job you can. In that spirit, here are the chapters of my parenting book:

Chapter One: Go Drink Some Water – Whenever my son had a physical ailment, the first thing I’d say was, “Go drink some water.” As it turns out, water cures about 90% of a child’s problems, including overheating, exhaustion, hunger, headache, itchy skin, leg cramps, boredom, and hypochondria. One thing water doesn’t cure: a broken foot. I learned that the hard way.

Chapter Two: Well, Robbie Is Probably Going to Be A Serial Killer – Your child will insist that Robbie, or whoever his friend is, has the best life, and he has the worst. What your child doesn’t know is that Robbie is probably going to end up in the State Pen when the authorities find body parts under the basement of his house. Or at least that’s what I told my son would happen to his friends who: went to PG-13 movies before age 13, got tattoos, smoked the Mary Jane, skipped school, drove a car without a license, or drank more than one soda a week.

Chapter Three: Talk to Me About How Awesome Robbie’s Parents Are in a Few Years – When your kids further complain about how Robbie-the-future-serial-killer gets to: go to co-ed sleepovers, carry a loaded gun, see Wiz Khalifa, wear a baseball hat with the bill facing sideways, or eat popcorn, despite the fact that he has braces, remember the title of this chapter. Right now, your kid won’t understand that Robbie’s parents start drinking at 3 pm, are constantly cheating on each other, don’t pay their taxes, and are wanted in Texas, but one day he will.

Chapter Four: I’ve Already Passed Tenth Grade – There will come a time when either your child, one of your child’s teachers, or one of your child’s coaches will suggest to you that your child’s life would be easier and better if you would just do his homework for him. You think I’m joking, but I’m not. And I KNOW that many of you have fallen for this, because it is a FACT that a Kindergartener is INCAPABLE of making an exact-to-scale replica of the White House, complete with pocket doors and vintage wallpaper in the Lincoln Bedroom without considerable help from you. Whenever someone suggested that I just do my son’s schoolwork, I would simply reply, “No thanks. I’ve already passed (whatever grade your child is currently in).”

Chapter Five: That’s Fine, As Long As You Understand that It’s a Cult – At some point, your child will want to join some weird, charismatic youth group. He will bring home a brochure that has healthy-looking kids doing wholesome activities, and will boast a membership of hundreds of thousands of kids across the country. In smaller print, it will mention that homosexuals, Muslims, non-believers, preggos, sluts, pinkos and members of Greenpeace are not allowed, nor is dancing, communing with the opposite sex, fingernail polish, makeup, or free thought. Still, your child will want to join, because they have pizza on Wednesday nights, and every other kid in the school has joined. Your response: make your kid watch the original version of Footloose, and let him know that you’re fine with him joining, as long as he understands that it’s a cult, and that he will probably have to get born again several times.

Chapter Six: Welcome Home. Please Let Me Shine this Flashlight In Your Face – As it turns out, underage drinking is totally illegal, and I refused to harbor a criminal. I had absolutely no problem waiting for my kid to get home, making him breathe in my face, and shining a flashlight in his eyes. And I seriously didn’t care that Robbie’s parents let him drink. As we all know, Robbie is going to be a serial killer.

Chapter Seven: Only Idiots Make Deals with Children – Have I mentioned that kids these days are soft? They are, and they think that everything is open to negotiation. I say negotiation is for suckers. Your kids want a collective decision-making process? They should get a lawyer. They want a democracy? They should write their own damn constitution. My house was a dictatorship, I was the dictator, and that’s the way it was. When you live in a world where people blow up buildings, swindle people out of their savings, train dogs to fight each other to death, and let other people go hungry, a dictatorship is a pretty safe place to be.

Chapter Eight: Feel Free to Put That in Your Tell-All Book – Inevitably, you will have to make decisions that are unpopular with your kids. Even wildly unpopular. I know plenty of parents who can’t take the heat, and cave under their child’s disappointment. I never had any such qualms. I would just cheerfully suggest to my son that any unfair, stupid, mean decision I made would eventually earn him big bucks when he wrote his tell-all book about his miserable childhood. “I’m not being mean, I’m investing in your future book profits,” I would add, a big smile on my face. “You can thank me later.”